continued: "Media Explosion in the Arab World: The Pan-Arab Satellite Broadcasters" by TBS Senior Editor S. Abdallah Schleifer
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The first of these satellite systems is MBC, the Middle East Broadcasting Centre, which began transmission in September 1991. MBC is an Arab version of an American network or European commercial channel. It broadcasts 18 hours a day, providing a mix of news and public affairs programming along with sports, fashion, movies, and other entertainment. Its format and style are very professional, sophisticated and fast-paced compared to the various Arab national channels, but it stays within broadly defined Arab standards of decorum and decency, both in its entertainment and public affairs programming. It has attracted considerable up-market advertising, and in the eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia, as well as in Bahrain (where no one needs a dish to receive MBC, as it is rebroadcast terrestrially by Bahrain TV), MBC has achieved major shares of the market competing against the national stations, ESN, and its two pan-Arab rivals ART and Orbit. MBC is transmitted and largely produced from London, and its staff is an interesting blend of of British administrators and technicians, Arab higher management and Arab directors, writers, producers and often quite elegant on-camera talent. At its head is the Saudi businessmen Sheikh Walid Ibrahimi, enjoying particularly close ties through marriage to Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd. [Editor’s note: please see this issue’s exclusive interview with MBC CEO Ian Ritchie.]

The second private Arab satellite system, and no doubt the largest in reach and in Arabic programming, is ART (Arab Radio and Television), established by Sheikh Saleh Kamel, the famous Saudi entrepreneur whose Dallah al-Baraka company has grown into a vast holding company successfully involved in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab countries in trading, Islamic banking, supermarkets, food product manufacturing, publishing, real estate and many other ventures. Sheikh Saleh was one of the original partners in MBC. Since striking out on his own with ART, he has gained as his partner in this vast broadcasting venture Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, whose stunning investments in Citicorp, Euro Disney, News Corporation, Apple and the Plaza Hotel have made him a major player in global finance. [Editor’s note: please see this issue’s exclusive interview with Sheikh Saleh Kamel.]

ART has pioneered in the Arab world the global trend in specialization broadcasting. It began transmission from the Telespazio Center in Fucino, Italy, to the east of Rome, via Arabsat in January 1994, providing four channels: a movie channel, a sports channels, a general or variety channel, and a children’s channel. Since then, ART has become a global platform for more than 20 channels, 17 of which are its own and most of which are encrypted. Over two years ago ART unveiled its own Broadcasting and Production Center in Avezzano, nearby the Telespazio Center. Operated by its Italian subsidiary Kidco Services, s.r.l., the Avezzano Center is a state-of-the-art digital transmission and production center put together for ART by Sony, which considers the center a showcase for its cutting-edge broadcast technology. The original three channels now broadcast 24 hours a day, except for the children’s channel, which broadcasts for 14 hours a day. The basic ART bouquet also includes an Arabic music channel, the Discovery-like al-Ma'arif channel, and combinations of the above broadcast to Europe, North and South America, Australia, and Africa.

More ART channels are scheduled for launch in the fall of 1998, including Iqra, a broadly designed Islamic culture channel. ART also carries in its various bouquets other, non- ART channels such as MBC, LBC, M-Net, TNT, Cartoon Network, RAI International and the Moroccan and Tunisian national channels.

Aside from live and syndicated sports coverage, much of ART production originates in Cairo, but programs are also being produced for ART in Avezzano, Beirut, Amman, Riyadh, Jeddah, Tunis, Dubai, Dusseldorf, Paris, and Rome.

To the degree that ART relies on live and syndicated coverage, as in the case of sports, or its impressive film library, it quickly acquired a very large following in its initial phase broadcasting in the clear. Its general or variety channel—dominated by entertainment but with occasional public affairs and business programming and considerable religious and Arab heritage programming—reminds one of the format, style and tone of the national channels, particularly of ETV.

Since encrypting more than two years ago, ART has been struggling to recover that large audience by concentrating on the development of a higher quality of programming. Its sports channel has acquired Middle East rights to the best of European football, including the Italian League and most recently the British Premiere League, as well as all four of the Grand Slam tennis tournaments.

Of particular interest is ART's no-news policy. ART sources have suggested several reasons that ART avoids providing news bulletins. One is that news, particularly if it is produced conscientiously by one’s own staff of Arabic-speaking TV journalists and by one’s own overseas bureaus, as in the case of MBC, is expensive. Secondly, news bulletins, if they are independent and touch on sensitive issues, risk stirring up official wrath and potential sanctions (like forbidding the sale of decoders where dishes are legal, or being kept off wireless cable systems where dishes are not legal). But in its quest for quality, ART has increased its number of public affairs talk shows, some of which, like Ya Hala, hosted by the well-known Egyptian journalist Hala Sirhan, involve audience participation and tackle controversial, and by Arab cultural standards, daring social issues for public dialogue such as divorce, premarital sex, male impotence and drug use. Obviously, ART is testing the waters.

The most recent Arab satellite system is Orbit, launched in May 1994 by the Saudi investment group al-Mawared and transmitted from Rome. Orbit was the first of the three pan-Arab satellite broadcasters to go digital and to encrypt, and it has been able to deliver an extraordinary amount of programming because of its willingness to use far more non-Arabic language programming than either of its two competitors. Orbit subscribers have access to over 40 TV and radio services provided by its own TV and radio network and by Star Select, an exclusive package of services provided to Orbit by Star TV. Orbit’s own network includes the Disney Channel, Orbit-ESPN Sports, America Plus (which features U.S. TV series such as Friends and Seinfeld), Super Movies (an HBO-type channel), Orbit News (a composite of programming provided by NBC, ABC and CBS), the Hollywood Channel (which focuses on U.S. fashion and entertainment), CNN International and the Fun Channel for children. [Editor’s note: please see this issue’s exclusive interview with Orbit President and CEO Alexander Zilo.]

Orbit’s Arabic programming is more or less confined to al-Thania, an Arabic-language general channel with some of the most successful entertainment and public affairs programming on the air, and Music Now, a global pop music mix "with a distinctive Arabic touch.” The Star Select package, part of the Orbit platform since January 1997, adds still more Western programming, such as Sky News and VIVA Cinema, and includes NBC, CNBC, Fox Kids Network, Star Movies, Star sports and Star Plus in America. The Orbit product is slick, but much of it seems rather irrelevant to an Arabic-speaking audience.

Although Orbit paid top dollar for access to Egypt TV’s first and second domestic channels, which are now available throughout the Arab world as part of the Orbit package, its ability to enter the Egyptian market is not so much limited by its price (Egypt does have an extraordinary number of millionaires, both Egyptian and other Arabs in residence) as by the ban in Egypt on the sale of any decoders but those sold by CNE, thereby for the time being giving CNE an apparent official monopoly in the pay-TV business, which carries over to the pay-TV programming now offered on Nilesat, including ART and its non-Arabic-language ally and platform sharer Showtime. Orbit is not on Nilesat. The decoder monopoly is apparent given the black market trade in Cairo in Orbit decoders ordered and delivered to Egyptian subscribers via Cyprus. In Saudi Arabia the manufacture and the sale of dishes have been banned for the past four years. Orbit has a number of subscribers among the many dish owners who set up before the ban, but the ban, which is not at all strictly enforced, has definitely cramped Orbit’s opportunity to expand in the Kingdom.

For a little more than a year, Orbit challenged MBC’s strong card—an Arabic-language news service that provided field reporting at an international standard beyond comparison to the parochial and propagandistic tendencies of the Arab world’s national channels. Orbit did this by commissioning the BBC to produce a BBC Arabic World Television Service, which was offered, encrypted or encoded, exclusively in the Orbit package. The comparison between the short-lived BBC Arabic TV News and MBC’s news product is instructive. continued

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